Monday, July 7, 2008

While he isn't the most careful fact-checker* on the net, Mike Whitney pulls together a useful synthesis of the current situation and prospects for the Afghan war:

The military [both Afghan and foreign] is limited to "hit and run" operations. The ground belongs to the Taliban.

Michael Scheuer, former CIA chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station, made this statement at a recent conference at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC: "Afghanistan is lost for the United States and its allies. To use Kipling's term, 'We are watching NATO bleed to death on the Afghan plains.' But what are we going to do. There are 20 million Pashtuns; are we going to invade? We don't have enough troops to even form a constabulary that would control the country. The disaster occurred at the beginning. The fools that run our country thought that a few hundreds CIA officers and a few hundred special forces officers could take a country the size of Texas and hold it, were quite literally fools. And now we are paying the price." ...

Author Anatol Lieven put it like this in an article in the Financial Times, "The Dream of Afghan Democracy is Dead": "The first step in rethinking Afghan strategy is to think seriously about the lessons of a recent opinion survey of ordinary Taliban fighters commissioned by the Toronto Globe and Mail. Two results are striking: the widespread lack of any strong expression of allegiance to Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership; and the reasons given by most for joining the Taliban -- namely, the presence of western troops in Afghanistan...

Lieven is right. The occupation and the careless killing of civilians has only strengthened the Taliban and swollen their ranks. The US has lost the struggle for hearts and minds and they don't have the troops to establish security. The mission has failed; the Afghan people have grown tired of foreign occupation and support on the homefront is rapidly eroding. The US is just digging a deeper hole by staying.

By every objective standard, conditions are worse now than they were before the invasion in 2001... security is non-existent and malnutrition is at levels that rival sub-Saharan Africa. Afghanistan not safer, more prosperous, or freer... The Karzai government has no popular mandate nor any power beyond the capital. The regime is a sham maintained by a small army of foreign mercenaries and a collaborative media which promotes it as a sign of budding democracy. But there is no democracy or sovereignty. Afghanistan is occupied by foreign troops. Occupation and sovereignty are mutually exclusive...

It is not even clear that women are better off now than they were under Taliban rule. According to Afghan Parliament member, Malalai Joya: "Every month dozens of women commit self-immolation to end their desolation... More Afghan civilians have been killed by the US than were ever killed by the Taliban.....The US should withdrawal as soon as possible. We need liberation not occupation." ... (link)

* E.g. Whitney also writes: "Khost has fallen into the hands of the Afghan resistance just as it did before the Soviet Army was defeated in the 1980s." Khost is not under the control of Taliban fighters in the same way that several districts in Kandahar province are (see this blog entry extracting from an interview with Sarah Chayes). On the contrary, US military commanders were recently touting their counterinsurgency successes in Khost and the east, though Afghanistan uber-expert Barnett Rubin gracefully rebuts that notion. In any case, Khost, a tiny province with an important US military base in it, is far less part of "Taliban country" than are other areas of Afghanistan, especially in the south.

As for Khost in the time of the mujahiddin: Areas outside of Khost city hosted jihadi training camps (see Burke, Al Qaeda; also Matinuddin, Taliban Phenomenon) though the important government garrison there was not taken by mujahiddin until 1991 (see Rubin, Fragmentation of Afghanistan).

I would be very cautious aboyut relying upon commentary of Sarah Chayes who has shown to be an avid supporter of the U.S. military in genberal terms and of some of Karzai's henchmen in the Kandahar area. Chayes is a charter representative of "feminism as imperialism" (phrase from the marvelous article in The Guardian some time ago by Katharine Viner at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/21/gender.usa ). US and pupper Afghan forces largely remain confined to the huge Camp Salerno base. They exit only with heavy ground and air support. In effect, Mike Whitney is correct that the Khost region is under de facto resistance (not "insurgent" or "militant") control.

Marc W. Herold

Dave Markland said...

Thank you very much for your interest.

I can assure all readers that EVERYONE is quoted with caution on this blog, from Chayes to Cheney, Bush to Barakzai to Barnett Rubin.

On Chayes: It is true that Chayes has expressed (critical) support for the occupation, which puts her in the company of a very big chorus of liberal opinion - journalists and academic specialists, etc. though that seems to be changing. (Here, we might speak of 'liberal imperialists' or 'humanitarian imperialists' such as Bricmont writes on.) However, I know of no source which questions her ability to accurately report on the matters I quoted her on. Note though that I quoted Chayes pretty much 'against interest', as a lawyer might say.

As for Whitney and the question of Taliban presence in Khost, his assertions are likely an uncredited citation of Asia Times reporter Syed Saleem Shahzad. Anyone who is familiar with Shahzad's reports knows that they are widely taken with a rather large grain of salt - which is a good thing for Shahzad's longevity. If his reports were uniformally true, he would long ago have been killed by Taliban operatives for giving away their strategies and troop movements. Much of what he reports is unverifiable and should be carefully considered as his anonymous sources obviously have political and strategic goals to promote. However, I would be deeply grateful to learn of any evidence that corroborates Shahzad's assertions.

My quibble with Whitney stems from the acknowledged existence of territories where Taliban commanders have appointed officials such as judges and mayors. Such is apparently the case just outside of Kandahar city in Nakhonay, which recently faced "Taliban reportedly enforcing their own laws and using the area as a staging ground for operations" (Smith, Globe and Mail, July 2). Also in northern Kandahar province (as Chayes asserts) and northern Helmand a similar situation is said to exist. This is not widely said to be the case in Khost.

The question raised as to what term to use - militants, resistance, etc. - seems to me uninteresting. I know of no useful legal or technical definitions for these terms, though I'd be grateful to learn of any. It seems obvious that each word on offer has its shortcomings. In any case, it seems to me our focus should be on somewhat different matters related to our actions and what the consequences are of same.

4 comments:

I would be very cautious aboyut relying upon commentary of Sarah Chayes who has shown to be an avid supporter of the U.S. military in genberal terms and of some of Karzai's henchmen in the Kandahar area. Chayes is a charter representative of "feminism as imperialism" (phrase from the marvelous article in The Guardian some time ago by Katharine Viner at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/21/gender.usa ). US and pupper Afghan forces largely remain confined to the huge Camp Salerno base. They exit only with heavy ground and air support. In effect, Mike Whitney is correct that the Khost region is under de facto resistance (not "insurgent" or "militant") control.Marc W. Herold

I can assure all readers that EVERYONE is quoted with caution on this blog, from Chayes to Cheney, Bush to Barakzai to Barnett Rubin.

On Chayes: It is true that Chayes has expressed (critical) support for the occupation, which puts her in the company of a very big chorus of liberal opinion - journalists and academic specialists, etc. though that seems to be changing. (Here, we might speak of 'liberal imperialists' or 'humanitarian imperialists' such as Bricmont writes on.) However, I know of no source which questions her ability to accurately report on the matters I quoted her on. Note though that I quoted Chayes pretty much 'against interest', as a lawyer might say.

As for Whitney and the question of Taliban presence in Khost, his assertions are likely an uncredited citation of Asia Times reporter Syed Saleem Shahzad. Anyone who is familiar with Shahzad's reports knows that they are widely taken with a rather large grain of salt - which is a good thing for Shahzad's longevity. If his reports were uniformally true, he would long ago have been killed by Taliban operatives for giving away their strategies and troop movements. Much of what he reports is unverifiable and should be carefully considered as his anonymous sources obviously have political and strategic goals to promote. However, I would be deeply grateful to learn of any evidence that corroborates Shahzad's assertions.

For my part, a territory is 'in the hands' of Taliban when their commanders have appointed officials such as judges and mayors. Such is apparently the case just outside of Kandahar city in Nakhonay, which recently faced "Taliban reportedly enforcing their own laws and using the area as a staging ground for operations" (Smith, Globe and Mail, July 2). Also in northern Kandahar province (as Chayes asserts) and northern Helmand a similar situation is said to exist. (This is, however, merely a question of definition.)

The question raised as to what term to use - militants, resistance, etc. - seems to me uninteresting. I know of no useful legal or technical definitions for these terms, though I'd be grateful to learn of any. It seems obvious that each word on offer has its shortcomings. In any case, it seems to me our focus should be on somewhat different matters related to our actions and what the consequences are of same.

I don’t wish to get into a mud fight. Two critical issues seem here to be at play: (1). Does Ms. Chayes represent humanitarian imperialism? ; and (2) what evidence exists to back up my assertion that Khost outside the main city is de facto in the hands of the resistance? I completely discount anything whatsoever coming from the U.S. military propaganda center at Bagram which has revealed itself to be a master at manufacturing virtual reality. Such resistance especially in the Khost area is mostly not Taliban per se but rather the much more formidable group led by Jalaluddin Haqqani (whom the US has been trying to assassinate at great cost to innocent Afghan civilians since November 2001 – see my essay at http://www.cursor.org/stories/jalaluddin.htm ). I would be happy to provide evidence that Khost Province (just like those around Saigon 40 years ago) remains dangerous to US/NATO occupation troops. Let me return now to the first matter mentioned above:

A former foreign correspondent for National Public Radio (1997-2002) and now indirectly in the employ of Karzai, Harvard-educated Sarah Chayes was interviewed on Bill Moyers N.O.W. program on October 24, 2003. Let me be very clear at the outset, brutality against women (and men) is in my view to be condemned and struggled against. The Northern Alliance and the Taliban did perpetrate misogynist policies.

Chayes works for the Kandahar-based N.G.O., Afghans for a Civil Society. She is merely the most current exemplar of an interventionist, opportunistic, de-contextualised, hegemonic, universalistic feminism applied to Afghanistan. Chayes either does not recognize or does not admit how education is often just another tool of (western) cultural hegemony - or, put alternatively, who speaks for whom in mainstream western feminism. Earlier examples of such interventionists abound, from the pro-US invasion Equality Now, the Feminist Majority Foundation, on to Laura Bush. The standard targets are either the burqa/veil, or the suppression of girls' education. I shall focus upon Chayes and her conversation with NOW's David Brancaccio.

Chayes referred to Soviet destruction of Kandahar in the 1980s, but was completely silent on that caused by severe US bombing during October - December 2001. She was also silent on the effects of U.S. bombing upon Afghan women, a topic which I have spoken and written about. Why? Well, Chayes is funded and supported by the Karzai family, which serves U.S. interests in Afghanistan. There is nothing inherently wrong with this funding, unless what Chayes then speaks merely advocates that particular view, in effect corresponds with those interests. She does so speak. In a broader sense, Chayes illustrates the post-Beijing, “expertized”, professionalized feminist movement which has carved out for itself a well-paying niche in the N.G.O. community.

Chayes (like others) seems single-mindedly obsessed with bringing "education" to Afghan girls, regardless of what age-old, local traditions might be. This strikes me as an example of interventionist cultural imperialism (not that different really from what the Christian religion did for a millennium - saving those lesser souls as the White Man's burden). When education comes from the local communities, when teachers are hired by community's elders, and when the curriculum is determined by that local community, then real education is taking place. Such a perspective eschews treating western practices as the measure of progress for women and for society and accepts the possibility that 'modernization' shaped by non-Western cultures might in some instances offer women more dignity, respect and power. The difference is between telling to and listening to communities. A glance at the website of Afghans for a Civil Society quickly reveals that the civil society being advocated is precisely one with the institutions and beliefs of the West. As such, the education promoted will per force be that which both fosters such a civil society and permits functioning "successfully" within such a civil society. In response to a question from Brancaccio whether she feared for her safety, Chayes said that because people knew of her connection to the Karzai family of the local Popolzai tribe and that she was an American - and 1'500 U.S. troops were nearby (at Kandahar airport) - she felt less vulnerable than others might and, therefore, could pursue a mission locals might not be able to. In other words, her privileged position allowed her intervention backed by the potential use of force.

A big difference exists between the efforts of Karzai-backed Chayes and those of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). RAWA has struggled within Afghanistan since 1977. It has led a bottom-up, community-based struggle for everyone's rights, including those of women. It views its mission within a logic of grassroots' resistance and promoting broader social change. Chayes, on the other hand, is satisfied with promoting girls' education within both the context of a Kabul regime comprised of former thugs and criminals of the Northern Alliance alongside U.S.-promoted puppets and a vision of an appropriate civil society as simulacrum of that found in Euro-America. RAWA refuses to have any part with the Kabul regime as currently constituted.

Chayes' keen concern for women's education is only limited to Afghanistan. Why? Are there not hundreds of millions of poor African and South American girls who cannot go to school because of destitution, bone-crushing poverty? To listen to Chayes one might believe that only the Taliban prevent girls' education. The blinders of Chayes & Co. are very revealing of her opportunistic political agenda. Where was Chayes & Co. in the 1990s, esp. the early 90s when the Northern Alliance thugs ran the show (and still do in many parts of Afghanistan, e.g., the North, Center and West of the country).

Chayes did mention that some Afghans (e.g., a taxi driver) missed the safety which had existed under the Taliban, but not the Taliban's ideology. No evidence provided that it was not both. After all, southern Afghanistan is a very conservative Muslim region. In other words, Chayes is again 'tilting' her story towards Karzai and his U.S. benefactors (if only the Karzai armed forces could provide stability, everything would be just dandy).

In sum, Chayes' message is aligned with US foreign policy objectives, is flagrantly opportunistic in the sense of caring for only Afghan women - other women of the Third World who cannot gain an education because US-backed structural adjustment policies have put schooling outside of their reach, are simply of no concern to Chayes & Co., and expresses a 21st century interventionist cultural imperialism (the White Women's Burden).

The question raised as to what term to use - militants, resistance, etc. - seems to me uninteresting. I know of no useful legal or technical definitions for these terms, though I'd be grateful to learn of any. It seems obvious that each word on offer has its shortcomings. In any case, it seems to me our focus should be on somewhat different matters related to our actions and what the consequences are of same.

Words really matter! Words are anything but mere neutral transmitters of information. The words “militants”, “insurgents” and ultimately “terrorists” serve to convey and reinforce the US/NATO occupiers (note I do not use that other loaded term “coalition”) version of reality. So, yes, I do believe this is both interesting and highly political. As feminists so aptly have argued language is a terrain of struggle. To deny that is to simply reinforce the dominant, mainstream interpretation by letting it defince (unchallenged) the language (discoiurse) employed.